Text to Speech

[toast0r]

Hi,

I'm trying to use Text to Speech in a little program I'm making with MMF2 Standard.

I'm sorry - I'm sure that this has been covered before, but I'm struggling to find more than a brief reference to the Text to Speech Extension.

I've downloaded the Extension and copied it into the MMF extensions folder, but for some reason when I run MMF, I can't find the extension in the objects window. Have I missed something obvious?

I'd be grateful for any help anyone can give me here - and feel free to point me to a previous thread if I've missed it.

Thanks a lot!
--
toast0r

[Keli]

Did you add to this folder also
Multimedia Fusion Developer 2a\Data\Runtime

Else the Extensions does not show up or so I thought. Took it out of the runtime folder and it works allright for me.

keli

[James]

It will show up fine if it isn't in the runtime folder, you just won't be able to build your application.

[neat_Kliker2]

Have you got the latest build of MMF2 (it wont work on 1.5)?
What OS are you using ? Maybe some of the depentdant files are missing, get dependancy walker and check

[toast0r]

Hi,

Thanks for your help. In the end it was resolved by installing the latest update (I didn't realise I was behind) and now it shows up.

I'm glad you both pointed out the Runtime folder thing though otherwise I would've been wondering why I couldn't build my app later on!

Now I've had a bit of time to fiddle with the Text to Speech extension, and while it's very staightforward to use (thanks to Daniel I think for that?) it's not quite as controllable as the Microsoft Speech SDK one seems to be.

So now my question is this - I thought I'd try the activeX class for text to speech to see how it compares. I've downloaded and installed SDK 5.1, and tested it with the standalone test app which comes with it, and it works fine. When I look for it within the activeX object in MMF I can't find it. Is this just me being a fool again?

The other thing I was wondering was whether there are any alternatives which I've overlooked which may offer better speech quality?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks again!

[neat_Kliker2]

it uses the microsoft narrator speech engine on your pc, configure speech from control panel with a different voice (check websites, good realistic ones cost lots of money) and it will work set like that in MMF

[toast0r]

Ah! I hadn't spotted the control panel bit before. It works exactly as you said it would, thanks.

It makes me wonder though - what is the 'sample TTS voice' for? it sounds the best in the control panel but when fed custom text it just says "blar" for each word!

I'll have a look on the web, but I did imagine that the best sounding voices would cost money, which I suppose is fair enough as I'm sure a lot of work has gone into them.

Thanks!

[Novabrain]

Just as a note, there was a far more extensive TTS extension in production a while back. There is a potential to do a lot more with it than the current extension allows.

Maybe, if enough users are interested in more functionality for something like this, the EDT can consider redoing this in the future.

[SEELE]

i would ADORE! a speech to text object... THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!.

[z33z]

Maybe I should convert the "far more extensive TTS extension" to mmf2?